Autopsy of a Deal: Beneva and Fruitville

In the tech world, project managers have a post-project meeting called a post mortem to step back and see what the hell happened. So that’s what SRiQ is going to do with the story we did about the intersection of Fruitville and Beneva Roads.

To recap, the city of Sarasota received two bids for a piece of publicly-owned property at the corner of Beneva and Fruitville Road: one for $1.4 million-ish and another for $3 million. So naturally the city commission, working on behalf of the public and its land assets, chose the $3 million deal, right? The same city struggling to balance its budget and find money to help the homeless would of course want the higher deal. Of course, the legions of activists who sue at the smallest procedural hiccup are all over this one, right?

Well, no. On Aug. 20, the city commission OK’d the lower offer for the public parcel. Other local newspapers have covered the meeting (such as the Sarasota Patch and Herald Tribune), which can be seen here when your scroll towards the bottom to item XII 2. The backup material for the deal, which was approved, is here.

This is an absurd deal and seems to stand as a monument to the dysfunction and corruption here in Sarasota --- not big-city corruption, but small town, "we know best" patronage corruption. Let’s look at some of the main points from the meeting:

With Benderson we know what we're getting. Yeah---strip malls with geraniums. SRiQ has argued before that we need better mixed-use projects within the urban boundary. Plus parts of the deal are “tentative.” That’s not exactly knowing what you’re getting.

"It's very manipulative. You're kind of hijacking the process here." This is what the mayor said in response to a flyer (see photo) sent to nearby residents that showed a “cartoonish” big box store looming over the neighborhood. Indeed. How dare you highjack a process that has been kept secret for two years where the city is selling public assets!

"For me, it's not a question of what's the best cash in our pocket today. (It’s) what's going to be the best project for Sarasota in a 25-year timeframe?"  This is what Terry Turner (the one who somewhat secretly funded a ballot initiative) said before voting for the deal. What? This deal neither put the best cash in pocket, nor even hints at a good project 25 years from now. 

Take the lower bid because there is so much drainage work that needs to be done. Do the Commissioners have any idea what a horrible precedent this is? Certainly the Commission is entitled to take something other than the highest bid if there is evidence or circumstances showing the higher-bid deal will go south. But that evidence is not here. In fact, the bootstrap bid process that had to substitute for actual government process ended up with two bids. Infrastructure is a manufactured issue. It’s not even infrastructure that needs upgrading. Developers are proposing to “fix” infrastructure problems that they will create. Now it's precedent. Thanks.

"This is a sweetheart deal. That's what it looks like. That's what it smells like."  Thank you, Shannon Snyder. Because you said it, we don’t have to. This is only the first of a two-step process because the rezoning and other improvements must also be approved. We plan on doing a better job reporting the second part to make sure we offer up more creative options. When the public offers up better data and options, that's when patronage stops.